The invention relates to a vehicle mileage logging system, and particularly to a vehicle mileage logging system that can calculate a cumulative mileage log with the assistance of a navigation assist system.
The use of motor vehicle mileage logging systems is becoming more prevalent. Typically, these systems calculate cumulative mileage logs from a group of selected individual trip logs where the individual trip logs can only be determined as the vehicle is being driven from an origination point to a desired destination point.
One known system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,115,655 (Keith et al.) Keith et al. teach a method of measuring a distance traveled by a vehicle where there is equipment on-board the vehicle to determine information for an individual trip and a fixed base that is not located on board the vehicle. The fixed base includes a base computer that communicates with the on-board equipment when the vehicle is physically stationed and connected to the fixed base. The base computer will calculate a cumulative mileage log once the individual trip information is communicated to the base computer.
A disadvantage of this system is that the cumulative mileage log is not calculated on-board the vehicle. Further, the system will only allow the cumulative mileage log to include individual trip entries in which the vehicle actually traveled the route and the system was prompted to keep a log of the information.
The present invention resolves the problems outlined above by providing a method for creating a cumulative mileage log on-board a vehicle having a navigation assist system. Navigation assist systems are used on-board vehicles to provide the location of the vehicle and often have the ability to map out a route to a desired destination point. Improvements have been made to these systems to keep track of the mileage traveled for individual trips using the navigation assist system.
The system disclosed here goes one step further. This system is capable of calculating a cumulative mileage log of selected individual trips on-board a vehicle. However, this system will include in the cumulative mileage log, individual trips in which the navigation assist system was not prompted to keep track of the mileage traveled. Further, the system allows multiple cumulative mileage logs to be calculated based on several different types of individual trip logs.
The first type of individual trip log includes information determined as the vehicle is actually being driven with the assistance of the navigation system. The second type of individual trip log includes a manual entry of an origination point and a destination point where the navigation assist system will compute an estimated mileage between the two entered points. A third type of individual trip log includes a manually entered estimated trip mileage.
Additional benefits and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art to which the present invention relates from the subsequent description of the preferred embodiment and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.